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MEADE 


COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY. 


4LB 

94 

opy 1 

SPEECH 


■ viV 

HON. GEORGE B. LORING, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS, 


IN THE 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 


APRIL 19, 1878. 



I 




\ 















SPEECH 


OF 

HON. GEORGE B. BORING. 


The House being in Committee of the "Whole on the Private Calendar, and hav- 
ing under consideration the bill (H. E. Ho. 189) to reimburse the College of William 
and Mary, in Virginia, for property destroyed during the late war — 

Mr. LORING said : 

Mr. Chairman : The bill under consideration, providing for tlie 
reimbursement of William and Mary College for tbe destruction 
of its property during tbe civil war, is not now for tbe first time 
brought to tbe attention of Congress. It has often been considered 
here, and has been so fully discussed that it would seem to be im- 
possible to state any new facts or frame any new argument in con- 
nection with tbe subject. Tbe history of the case is very familiar. 
At tbe outbreak of the war in 1861 this college, which bad become 
distinguished in tbe history of American education for tbe powerful 
and illustrious jurists and statesmen whom it had sent forth to inter- 
pret our laws and guide our national councils during all our colonial, 
revolutionary, and constitutional periods, was brought into antago- 
nistic relations to the Federal Government. Situated as it was in 
territory where the right of a State to withdraw from the Union was 
most vigorously and earnestly asserted, it was involved at once in all 
the most active operations of the war in support of that assertion. 
With the zeal and earnestness characteristic of cultivated men, the 
faculty and the students of the college united in the work of dedi- 
cating its halls to the accommodation of confederate troops, and in 
filling up the ranks of those who were arrayed against the Govern- 
ment. In the catalogue of the college may be found a long list of those 
who laid aside their studies and went forth to meet the alumni of 
the northern colleges in that fearful combat which clothed the schol- 
arship of our land with a new and unwonted radiance of devotion 
and valor, repeating the brilliant lesson taught by Themistocles when 
he led the educated Athenians at Salamis, and by Von Moltke when 
he “ marshaled the educated Germans against France.” All this is 
not denied. During the first year of the war, until May, 1862, the 
college was held, first as barracks and then as a hospital, by the 
confederate forces. From that time until the close of the war, except 
for a few hours on the 9th of September, 1862, it was occupied by 
Union troops and was used by them for the storing of military sup- 
plies and other purposes of convenience to our armies. In a skirmish 
on the 9th of September, 1862, the main building was burned by the 
Federal forces who occupied them, and at later periods of the war, 
during which the same forces held possession of them, “ all the remain- 
ing houses on the college premises were, with the inclosures, burned 


4 


or wholly or in part pulled to pieces.” And for this destruction a 
large body of the friends of good learning throughout this country 
desire that the college should be remunerated at the hands of Con- 
gress. 

Now, sir, I have no desire to discuss this question in accordance 
with the strict construction of the law or with a keen eye to the 
exact nature of the unfortunate incidents which I have briefly re- 
cited. I do not care to condemn the college and deny its appeals to 
our generosity and kindness because its sons rushed to battle and 
laid down their lives in a condemned and misguided cause. I do not 
care to advocate its claims for damages on the ground that its prop- 
erty was destroyed while occupied by the Federal Government and 
for the convenience of Federal armies in time of war. I do not care 
to ask whether it stood on Union or confederate soil during that un- 
happy period. I do not care to bring the question where it will be 
involved in the intricacies of the law. I am aware that in view of 
the acknowledged “right of the victorious invader to tax the people 
or their property, to levy forced loans, to billet soldiers, or to appro- 
priate property, especially houses, lands, boats, or ships, and churches, 
for temporary and military uses,” the claim of William and Mary 
College for legal damages may be a slight and questionable one. I 
am also aware that by general military order 100, issued by our Gov- 
ernment during the rebellion, “the property belonging to churches,, 
to hospitals, and other establishments of an exclusively charitable 
character, to establishments of education, or foundations for the pro- 
motion of knowledge, whether public schools, universities, academies 
of learning, or observatories, museums of the fine arts, or of a scien- 
tific character, * * * may be taxed or used when the public serv- 

ice may require it,” even while it is to be secure against all avoid- 
able damage, and shall in no case be wantonly destroyed or injured 
under official orders. 

If my attention is called to the fact that the buildings of the col- 
lege were occupied for merely temporary purposes, and not by our 
Army for general army uses — uses tolerated by the rules of war 
which govern an invading army in an enemy’s country — I can only 
reply that I am not considering the authority under which they were 
occupied, nor the character of the occupation, but the fact that they 
were destroyed in an unfortunate conflict, whose sorest wounds we 
would gladly heal. My mind turns naturally to the established law 
that friends and sympathizers of a belligerent powerimust share the 
trials and hardships and losses imposed by that power upon its ene- 
mies whom it invades, if they are found on the hostile soil of the 
belligerent ; and I anticipate the argument which would be made 
against this case, even if the college had a loyal record, by those who 
will not realize that the terms of peace offered by the Federal Gov- 
ernment to those who had failed in their efforts to destroy it were 
distinguished not only for justice but for a fraternal magnanimity 
never to be forgotten by either party to the great conflict and to the 
still greater pacification w hich has followed. When I am reminded 
that no evidence appears that these “ buildings were taken possession 
of by our Army or by the garrison for general army purposes with a 
view to rendering compensation therefor to the owners,” I can only 
say I have no disposition to place this case in that line where a 
legal technicality may defeat it or where, by being favorably passed 
upon, it will establish a troublesome and expensive legal precedent. 

I sympathize fully with those who would carefully limit the liability 
of the Government, with respect to the wide-spread and necessary 


and at the same time distressing destruction of property which grew 
out of the civil war. There are woes innumerable in this direction 
which time alone can cover with oblivion, and which no public treas- 
ury could possibly compensate. It is not the destruction of educa- 
tional property, or any other property, by authorized or unauthorized 
persons in time of war and in accordance with or in violation of the 
rules of war, therefore, that I would consider in connection with this 
case. I am ready to concede in the outset that no nation should be 
held accountable for “ injuries done to others by disorderly, unauthor- 
ized soldiers belonging to its armies.” I am ready to concede that a 
temporary occupation of premises, whether educational, church, or 
charitable property, by a nation’s armies, does not create a liability 
analagous to that growing out of a permanent occupation, for which 
due compensation has been contracted by proper and recognized 
authority. I yield to law and to well-established precedents on all 
these points. I have no desire to break down the safeguards which 
the wisdom of experience has erected around the Treasury for the com- 
plicated emergencies which grow out of wars foreign and domestic. 
But recognizing the full force and importance of all legal obliga- 
tions and duties, realizing the importance of avoiding every measure 
that can be interpreted in any way as a dangerous or a tempting prece- 
dent, I feel compelled, nay, I am anxious to consider the destruction 
of William and Mary College as an act for which our country should 
provide a prompt and liberal compensation. To my mind the case 
stands above all the legal objections to which I have alluded and be 
longs to that class which civilized nations have recognized as appeal- 
ing to that tender regard for all man’s endeavors to improve his moral 
and intellectual and religious nature, by which alone can we mitigate 
the horrors of war. If an unwritten law of broad humanity and gen- 
erous sympathy for those institutions which elevate and refine and 
ennoble society is applicable anywhere, it is in a case like this. 

Now, sir, in order that I may satisfy the minds of gentlemen here 
that I am not mistaken in assuming that institutions like William 
and Mary College have enjoyed an immunity from the destruction 
that attends on war, in every civilized community, let me refer to the 
statements and illustrations with which we have all been made fa- 
miliar in the long period during which this case has been discussed. 
Of the destruction of these buildings General Meade said, it “ was 
not only unnecessary and unauthorized, but was one of those deplor- 
able acts of useless destruction which occur in all wars,” and that he 
took “ great pleasure in recommending the appeal of Professor Ewell 
to all those who have the means and the disposition to assist him in 
the good work in which he is engaged.” History abounds with illus- 
trations of the anxiety man has manifested to conduct civilized war- 
fare in such a manner as to indicate his sacred regard for all institu- 
tions dedicated to education, religion, and charity. In all the civil 
wars of England her schools and colleges have been scrupulously pre- 
served, and Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Oxford, and Cambridge, the ancient 
schools and universities of the realm, bear witness to the lofty deter- 
mination of our English ancestors to stay the desolation of war be- 
fore the shrines of education and religion. 

Need I remind gentlemen of the prompt and resolute determination 
of the allied powers to restore the objects of taste and art which had 
been ruthlessly borne to Paris by the armies of Napoleon in his great 
wars ? Is it necessary to recall the action of Great Britain in taking 
care that the paintings and prints designed for the Academy of Arts 
in Philadelphia should be returned to that institution, after having 


6 


been captured by her cruisers on the high seas during the war of 1812? 
Have gentlemen forgotten the reparation made by Washington to the 
college at Princeton for merely accidental damage sustained by it 
during the battle at that place? Have they forgotten the alacrity 
with which the British General Tryon restored to Yale College the 
manuscripts of its venerable President Stiles which were borne away 
during the revolutionary conflict which raged around and within that 
renowned institution ? The practice of modern warriors and the rules 
of modern warfare have always provided for the protection and pres- 
ervation of all libraries, schools, universities, and colleges. To bar- 
barous invaders alone, on the other hand, has been left the ignoble 
business of desj)oiling the alcoves and tearing down the walls within 
wdiicli sound learning was stored and bestowed. He who studies his- 
tory aright will remember that the high value set by man upon that 
national power which springs from mental and moral culture has led 
the cultivated people of all ages to the sacred preservation of schools 
and libraries in times of war. The conflict between those who have 
erected schools and colleges and those who have destroyed them 
may be said indeed to mark the strife between the conflicting forces 
of mankind. In no such conflicts have we been engaged ; nor have 
we placed ourselves in association with those to whom education is 
a stumbling-block, but always with those who even in their bloodiest 
wars have not forgotten their sacred obligations to cherish the best 
attributes of man and in their civil wars have never forgotten their 
duties to the civilized world. 

Now, sir, what is this college I am considering, what its signifi- 
cance, what its service, what its relation to the guiding thought of 
the American people ? In order that I may impress upon the minds 
of gentlemen here the exact estimate I entertain of the peculiar 
claim it has on our respect and veneration and pious care, as a mon- 
ument erected by the fathers to the cause of good learning, I beg to 
be allowed to dwell for a few moments on the character of the in- 
stitution itself as one of the earliest fountains of American knowl- 
edge, and to appeal to the love and veneration we have for those who 
planted our free institutions on this continent more than two cen- 
turies ago, and who amid all their trials and sufferings looked for- 
ward with heroic faith to a republic of freedom and education. Why, sir, 
this college for which I speak holds a place in history as much "more 
important and conspicuous than the ordinary institutions to which I 
have alluded as the dawn of a young and powerful republic is more ra- 
diant than the dim and somber decline of a decayed and broken dynasty. 
It was planted by our fathers in the wilderness when they brought 
with them to these shores their heroic purpose and the principles of 
free government upon which this imposing civil fabric now rests. 
Founded in the latter part of the seventeenth century it shared with 
Harvard the generosity and tender care which the ripe scholars of 
that day bestowed upon their seminaries of learning. “ The generous 
Boyle,” stretching out one hand to Virginia and the other to Massa- 
chusetts, bound these two infant colonies together by the tender tie 
of mutual gratitude to a common benefactor and friend. To these 
colleges the colonial treasuries were open when the accumulated funds 
were the fruits of hard toil and stern economy. In that powerful 
southern colony, where for many years the wealth and culture of Eng- 
land gathered on this continent and whose voice was always heard 
in every great crisis, the College of William and Mary was an object 
of the most tender regard, as it was also in England whence its bene- 
factors came. Its doors were open to the best scholars of the old 


7 


country, wlio came here to~pursue their investigations unmolested 
and to share the free thought of the New World. As time went on it 
became the nursery of the great principles on which our Government 
was founded and of the great men who declared these principles and 
defended them with their blood. 

Are you sure, sir, that the significance and power of this college 
and of her elder sister, Harvard, have been estimated at their true 
value as the representative and guiding institutions of our earliest 
colonial days ? Why, sir, they held in their hands and planted on 
these shores the best modes of thought and culture which made Eng- 
land famous in that era when she was tossed and riven by intellectual 
and moral and religious protests. At that time Bacon in science, Mil- 
ton in literature, Cromwell and Hampden and Pvm in politics all rep- 
resented that advancing and protesting force which has givenEngland 
her power and sent a democratic vitality into the colonies, which were 
largely peopled and almost universally inspired by independent En- 
glishmen. It was an era of right, and not of privilege. The hard 
lines of scholasticism were breaking up. Great scholars were schol- 
ars for the people, and not for the schools. The Protestants and non- 
conformists, and separatists of England could not accept as a guide 
to their thought a system of philosophy which was made indisputa- 
ble by the doctrines of a church whose ecclesiastical authority they 
denied and whose spiritual guidance they rejected. 

The learned men of England who watched, and many of whom took 
part in, the colonizing of America had long applied their minds to 
the investigation of problems connected with the best systems of pop- 
ular government. When William Brewster was graduated at Cam- 
bridge, England, in 1585, he carried his excellent scholarship at once 
into the work of guiding and counseling that little band of pilgrims 
who were then waiting at Scrooby for an opportunity to found an 
empire on freedom of conscience in matters of religion, a popular 
government on the consent of the governed. Occupying a high posi- 
tion among the progressive and independent thinkers of his time, he 
became familiar with the doctrines which disestablished the church 
in the most religious and fervid spot on earth in that day, and which 
shook the throne of England. And what a defiant crowd of scholars 
taught in the same school, inspired by the same thought and specu- 
lation, bent on the same purpose, flocked to these shores, bringing the 
independent spirit of the Protestant with them, under the care of the 
Huguenots of Carolina, the Covenanters of New Jersey, the Puritans 
of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and the cavaliers of 
Virginia, all joining hands in their great work with the Catholics of 
Maryland. When Roger Williams came to this New World and found 
no rest for the sole of his foot, until he had established for himself 
an opportunity to exercise the most “ unqualified freedom of con- 
science under human government,” he brought with him the culture 
which controlled the most powerful thought of England in his day. 
When Sir Harry Vane brought to the gubernatorial chair of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay colony a spirit of liberality and freedom which called 
around him the liberty-loving men of his times and clothed him with 
a power which Winthrop himself in support of magisterial authority 
could barely overthrow, he came fresh from Oxford and the best 
schools of Holland and Geneva, imbued with that spirit of learning 
which neither church nor state could subdue, and which won for 
him the divine tribute of Milton’s verse and an immortality in the 
most immortal chapter in history — that chapter in which is recorded 
the founding of civil and religious freedom in America. And so came 


8 


Endicott and Hooker and Cotton and Raleigh, familiar with the faces 
of those who are now to us the classic English writers, born of a 
people who were untamed and untamable in their self-assertion, who 
were nurtured on the sublimest English poetry, upon whose heaven- 
kissing summits the poets of all succeeding generations have been 
gazing with hopeless wonder and admiration, and on the most defiant 
English philosophy which opened the path trod by all modern inves- 
tigators — a people who declared for freedom and then fearlessly struck 
for it, who asserted a prerogative and then demanded a right, who in 
the Old World now rally round a throne as the insignia of their 
national power and in the New World stand by a constitution as the 
expression and embodiment of their social and civil principles. 

Born as these men were of controversy, dialectics, and debate, they 
strove with each other on the “ weightier matters of the law,” and 
disputed with ecclesiastical fervor upon the covenant and the doc- 
trines until the integrity and safety of the State itself seemed involved 
in the controversy. The pious zeal of John Endicott in executing the 
laws against those who differed from the religion of the colony, the 
political ardor of John Winthrop in organizing a defeat for Sir Harry 
Vane as governor of the colony on account of his defense of Mrs. 
Hutchinson against the bigotry of the colonial clergy, mark the 
spirit and character of the controversies which sprang up in those early 
days of civil and religious freedom. But on one point they united : 
the establishment of a popular system of education in which all 
might have a share ; a system intended to cultivate all men into a 
fitness for the enjoyment of the privileges of a free state, and for the 
exercise of its rights they never forgot and never neglected. They 
might exhaust themselves over “fixed fate, free-will, fore-knowledge 
absolute,” they might rend the State itself in a contest over the cove- 
nant and the half-way covenant, the civil rights of communicants and 
non-communicants, but for the cause of free education as the foun- 
dation of self-government they joined hands, and poured forth liber- 
ally from their resources in support of the school-house and the col- 
lege. It was education which had filled their minds with the doctrines 
of freedom, and they believed that through education all men could be 
brought to a true understanding of the church of Christ, and to an 
intelligent exercise of their rights as citizens of a free state. For the 
disputations of the schools they substituted the debates of the town 
meeting ; for the private school they substituted the district school- 
house open to all ; for a corporation of learning they substituted a 
republic of letters. They left behind them a system of state and 
society in which education would naturally confine itself to narrow 
channels, and they entered upon the organization of a state whose 
power would arise and increase from a general diffusion of knowledge 
through all ranks and orders of men. 

On the soil which they reclaimed and occupied has grown up a sys- 
tem of education which offers its blessings to all, which indeed would 
compel all to partake of its living waters ; a system supported and 
developed by the liberality and care of the state, and so universally 
organized that it would be easier to escape from the influences of the 
sun than from the omnipresence of the American college and school- 
house. To this western hemisphere they gave a republic of civil 
freedom ; to the world they gave an impulse to popular education 
which has made the land of their birth as well as that of their adop- 
tion the abode of the most liberal educational endowments known 
on earth. Had the American colonists done nothing more than this, 
had they failed to establish an independent nationality and simply 


9 


organized their universities for the culture and protection of a sound 
political and social philosophy, they would have accomplished a work 
for which their memories would ever be held in grateful remembrance; 
a work whose influence is now felt wherever the light of civilization 
shines ; a work in the performance of which the most powerful and 
enlightened nations of our day are engaged in a generous and honor- 
able rivalry. 

And not only did these colleges lay the foundations of our national 
characteristics, but they have taken a foremost part in that system 
of education which has deepened and developed our American na- 
tionality, and has produced an abundant crop of American citizens, 
not subjects, not persons destined to specific duties high and low, but 
citizens clothed with intelligence, and responsibilities, and supplied 
with abundant opportunities for the exercise of all their faculties. 
When Samuel Adams took his master’s degree at Harvard in 1743, he 
selected as a subject for his thesis the following question which his 
career has made immortal : “ An supremo magistratui resistere liceat, si 
aliter servari respublica acquit f ” — “ Whether it be lawful to resist the 
supreme magistrate, if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be pre- 
served ? ” While Thomas Jefferson was yet an infant in his cradle on 
the beautiful banks of the Rivanna, this Boston boy, educated in the 
Boston schools, and filled with the effects of the Puritan culture of 
Massachusetts, had reached, even at the very commencement of his 
intellectual endeavors, a fundamental civil problem, upon the solution 
of which all the philosophical thought of Jefferson exhausted itself 
in support of the American Revolution, and to establish the affirma- 
tion of which Washington dedicated all his imposing powers. In the 
mind of this young graduate of Harvard the condensed thought of 
more than a century of colonial life found an abiding place, and the 
topic which occupied his meditations was the subject which lay near- 
est to the hearts of his people. He was not alone in his investiga- 
tions. The highest and best laws of state and society occupied the 
active minds of that day wherever they might be found, whether in 
the assemblies of the elders, or in the austere labors of the Puritan 
pulpit, or in the town-meetings, or in the institutions of learning, 
the common schools, the academies, the colleges. Every village had 
its Samuel Adams. Every town record had its Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. From many a meeting-house went forth the announce- 
ment of faith in human equality as the foundation of the state long 
before the national utterance at Independence Hall. It was Amer- 
ican citizenship which constituted the first great object of American 
education. In all the practical affairs of life the fathers exercised 
their best powers, and became good merchants, good mechanics, 
good farmers, good legal advisers, strong and influential parish min- 
isters ; and for this service they stored their minds with the best 
knowledge to be derived from experience and books. But they 
knew well that the great civil problem committed to their hands 
required intelligent thought and needed the support of cultivated 
minds as well as defiant hearts and strong arms ; and while they had 
great confidence in the correctness of the popular impulse of their 
day, they had still greater confidence in the enlightened consciences 
and educated instincts of a people who believed in mental culture and 
made provision to obtain it. And to-day, as in the former days, sur- 
rounded as we are by the most perplexing questions of state and society, 
called upon to strike as well as to bear, laden with the trials of war and 
the highest responsibilities of peace, compelled to be ruthless now, and 
now generous and placable and forgiving, we must recognize the value 


10 


of the intelligence and thoughtfulness which are the natural fruits of 
education, and we should preserve and cherish with pious care every 
monument erected by our fathers to the cause of good learning, every 
institution founded by them for its cultivation and advancement. 
Time and war may destroy the monuments of our material grandeur, 
but I trust and believe that the American people, united now in a 
common civilization, bound together by common interests, will join 
hands in the higher service of restoring and developing every insti- 
tution which has given us the undying power which belongs to a 
cultivated people. 

I say, sir, the undying power which belongs to a cultivated people, 
because I have learned, and I desire to impress it upon the minds of 
gentlemen here who are engaged in guiding the councils of this peo- 
ple, that it is the thoughtful products of the schools, the principles 
declared by cultivated men, the fruits of profound mental exertion, 
which have alone been preserved and handed down to us, while all 
external grandeur has perished and material power and distinction 
have passed away. Of the great nations of antiquity which have 
disappeared and whose languages are now unspoken how true this is! 
For their great battle-fields the curious traveler now searches in vain. 
Their imposing halls are now silent. Their porticoes and arches and 
galleries are deserted. The greatness which they themselves admired 
is forgotten ; while the genius of their scholars and poets and orators 
and philosophers shines still with unfaded luster. Through the dark- 
ness which envelopes the early history of England, it is the great 
pinciples of government contained in Magna Charta and the doctrines 
announced by Milton and the Puritans which shine still with supernal 
luster; and it is a prudent and sagacious obedience to these principles 
and doctrines which has given the English nation its vitality and per- 
manency. So is it with our own country. How we linger around 
the first declarations of freedom and popular right made by the bold 
and true-hearted all along our pathway from the earliest settlement 
of the colonies. The forms and modes of government have changed 
and are forgotten. Of but small value to us now are the terms of 
charter granted to the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay ; 
the privileges bestowed upon Lord Baltimore and Oglethorpe, or the 
grants conferred upon the settlers of Virginia and the Carolinas. 
But we do remember that the fathers of New England, by a solemn 
instrument, in the words of Hutchinson, “ formed themselves into a 
proper democracy.” We do remember the glowing words of Warren : 
“ I am convinced that the true spirit of liberty was never so universally 
diffused among all ranks and orders of men on the face of the earth 
as it is now through all North America.” How do our minds pass on 
from the early struggles of the Revolution and the details of govern- 
ment in the several colonies to those grand assertions which roused 
and guided the popular mind and gave us the fundamental principles 
of a free commonwealth. The rivalries and strifes and cabals are all 
forgotten ; but not the great conceptions of John Adams with regard 
to the future of his country ; nor the abiding faith of Samuel Adams 
in “ the sovereignty of the people nor the thunders of Patrick Henry 
calling the people to war; nor the fiery appeals of James Otis ; nor the 
philanthropic thought of Jefferson presenting a great truth to the 
earnest and struggling multitude, for which they might fight and upon 
which we have at last learned to administer our Government. And do 
we weary ourselves now with the political controversies of the con- 
federate and early constitutional history, the charges of corruption by 
which Washington was aggrieved, the rivalry between Jefferson and 


11 


PTamilfcon, the passage of political power from Massachusetts to Vir- 
ginia ? Not at all. But we do dwell upon the early declarations of 
those fundamental doctrines upon which our Constitution is founded; 
we do dwell upon the profound wisdom of Jefferson as he laid down 
the rules which should guide his administration, and we dwell upon 
these thoughts and precepts because whatever else may have perished 
these still remain unbroken and undecayed. For the temporary trials 
which arise and threaten our Government from time to time the 
fathers left no guidance, relying as they did upon the devotion and 
wisdom of their sons upon whom the trials might fall. But they did 
fix and confirm in our history those sentiments of humanity and jus- 
tice which have triumphed over all obstacles ; they carried into the 
practical service of civil life those political doctrines which occupied 
the thoughts of the most patient students of their day, and they sent 
forth from the halls of their colleges those great social and civil truths 
which are so familiar to us that they seem to have sprung spontane- 
ously from man’s uncultivated instinct. At Bunker Hill and York- 
town they wrought out their material greatness ; at Harvard and at 
William and Mary they received their immortal power. 

Mr. Chairman, I have endeavored to give William and Mary Col- 
lege the place to which I think it is entitled in our history, and to 
appeal for its restoration not on the ground of abstract justice alone 
hut on the higher ground of national pride and affection. I doubt 
not I shall be called upon to sit in judgment here on many a demand 
growing out of the destruction of war and the necessities of the 
peace which follows, — for the foundation of a system of popular edu- 
cation which shall be oped to that race which the war emancipated 
and left in the hands of impoverished States, — for the reconstruction 
of those great works which the war destroyed, and without which 
the value of a broad and fertile territory is nearly ruined, — for the 
relief in many ways of the wide-spread and necessary and at the same 
time distressing destruction of property during the war to which I 
have already alluded, aud I shall endeavor to consider them, I trust, 
conscientiously, without prejudice, and with due regard to the obli- 
gations imposed upon me by the amended constitution and the laws 
of war, and with the thorough conviction that the time for present- 
ing all claims of this nature should be limited either by statute or 
constitutional amendment, and that their growing magnitude may be 
summarily ended. No man can desire to add to the horrors of war 
even the appearance of injustice in times of peace. The remarkable 
experiment of government in which we are engaged rests, it is true, on 
“ equal and exact justice but as conducted by ourselves it rests also 
on magnanimity and forbearance, which may encourage patriotic de- 
votion, and on the broadest principles of equity, which may inspire 
confidence and disarm fraud and dishonesty. And so we may step 
beyond the bounds of mere legal obligation and repair even the sem- 
blance of a wrong in our devotion to those institutions which have 
given character to our people and which lie at the foundation of our 
national power and greatness. Had my own Alma Mater, had Harvard 
College fallen before the storm of war which burst over our land, I 
should be here appealing to this Government for her restoration, to 
this Congress for its bounty. In the same spirit I come for William 
and Mary, ready to forget her errors, grateful for her gifts to my coun- 
try, proud of that record which she secured when, standing by her 
great sister in Massachusetts, she nourished and cherished all the 
noble attributes of American nationality and connected her nanift 
with that imperishable work of which eyery American is proud and 


12 


which can never he forgotten while correct forms of human govern- 
ment shall endure. From the heroic age of our country the name of 
William and Mary College can never be obliterated. And I cannot 
believe that those who come after us will be compelled by our economy, 
or iron justice, or sense of retribution, to remember as they gaze upon 
her walls that she owes nothing to our generosity and that she endures 
in spite of our neglect. 

In advocating this bill, Mr. Chairman, I have discharged what I 
consider a plain and imperative duty, in view of our debt of grati- 
tude to the past and the inevitable national harmony which the 
future will bring as the result of a policy inaugurated by ourselves. 
Whatever we may do here and now, the time is coming when the 
losses of this college will be repaid, in obedience to a natural senti- 
ment which must and will animate the mind and heart of the Amer- 
ican people in those years of peace and concord and mutual under- 
standing and sacred regard for the rights of all men which I trust 
in God are not far distant. As the violence of the conflicts which 
have surrounded us becomes softened, and the wounds are all healed 
and the antagonism dies away, that affection which a powerful nation 
always feels for its ancestry will surely move some future Congress 
to relieve these burdens, should we ourselves fail to perform the hon- 
orable service. At this very hour this sentiment moves within us. 
As we contemplate the memory of those whose heroism and devotion 
laid the foundations of our national greatness, we even now forget 
our controversies and join in a spontaneous tribute to their worth as 
a common inheritance. On every anniversary of their illustrious deeds 
in field and in council, we assemble like brethren of one family and 
rej oice together in the work they performed for us and ours. Cemented 
as we now are by the radiance of the past, we cannot, I am sure, allow 
one of its most cherished possessions to be destroyed from the face of 
the earth. The very trials through which we have passed, the discord 
and conflict and sorrow, have given a keener and a brighter charm 
to the popular privileges for which we have suffered so much and to 
those spots in which they found their early home. The battle-field 
and the heroes, the halls where rang the great debate, the leaders in 
council, the tribunes of the people, the schools and colleges in which 
the devoted youth were trained, have now more than ever before a 
national significance and have become indeed a national possession. 
We preserve the mansion at Mount Yernon from the destroying tooth 
of time, and in its holy shades our differences are forgotten. We sum- 
mon a grateful people to pay their tribute to the memory of Warren 
and his earnest and devoted comrades who fell at Bunker Hill, and 
the controversy is hushed, men but just now arrayed against each 
other join in a common joy, the strife is forgotten, and Massachusetts 
and South Carolina, New England and Virginia, stand shoulder to 
shoulder on the hallowed spot where the bones of a common ancestry 
repose, and the monument which is pointing to their heavenly home 
becomes a national monument forever. The place where Warren fell 
belongs not now to Massachusetts alone ; the halls in which Jeffer- 
son and Marshall trained their minds for the high service of their 
country, the cloisters where the two Adamses, duo geminos fulmina 
belli — “ the twin thunderbolts of war” — learned their great lessons 
of patriotic defiance, are the cherished possession of the people whom 
they delivered from bondage. It is not for the property of Virginia 
but for a national monument that I speak ; and when I ask that a 
structure whose name belongs to this illustrious roll shall be pre- 
served by a national bounty, I am engaged in advocating no war claim 


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for damages ; I am occupied in considering no precedent ; I am only 
calling on Congress to preserve the ancient land marks of our national 
greatness and to restore the monuments around which our brightest 
memories cluster and at whose feet we renew our vows as citizens of 
a common country and heirs and defenders of a common inheritance 
of social equality and of civil and religious freedom. 


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